


When We and Nature Intertwine

by myglassesaredirty



Category: Psych
Genre: Also headcanons, Nature, Poetry, all relationships are barely mentioned, idek how i got this idea don't ask me, inspired by julie cuz she said it was poetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 10:57:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18387053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myglassesaredirty/pseuds/myglassesaredirty
Summary: We all have a lot more in common with the ocean than we care to admit.





	When We and Nature Intertwine

When you step outside and see the sun,

What do you think of?

Or better yet –

_ Who _ do you think of?

When the world is full of nature, and you’re wild and free,

What type of people do you see?

 

People can be found in everything –

In the rocks,

In the trees.

Rivers,

Even seas.

The rose bush that pricks your finger

Is the woman you see at work.

So sit down, and let me speak.

Let me tell you a story about the people we see.

 

We all know Henry Spencer

In the world of parenting.

He’s strict and hard

But really very loving.

His wife and son are all he has,

And he’ll protect them with an iron fist.

But let me say something that no one knows about Henry Spencer:

Henry Spencer is a rock.

He doesn’t change easily. It takes

Years

Of shaping, carving, of gentle change to mold him.

He’s solid,

Consistent.

He may be hard,

And certainly far from soft,

But when you need him,

He’s always there:

A person to lean upon.

He’s a weapon in himself.

When someone threatens his family

(Or any of his loved ones, really),

He will hurt you. There is not a question about it.

His beliefs are unyielding,

Unweathered by wind or storm or fire.

 

Carlton Lassiter is in a league of his own.

He’s what Henry Spencer could have been,

Almost what Henry was.

But there’s something different about Carlton.

He’s no rock like Henry might be.

Solid and unchanging though he may be,

He is more like a redwood than a rock.

Part of it has to do with height

And how all trees have this phase of lanky awkwardness.

But Carlton  _ can _ change with the weathering of a storm.

Branches will fall;

He will be shaken.

Parts of him are even gentle, though rough.

He always wanted to be a father,

And the day he almost lost Spencer and Guster

Was one of the most difficult of his life.

(He always says it’s because he almost lost O’Hara –

O’Hara, who is his best friend, by all definitions.

O’Hara, who is more a sister to him than his own flesh and blood.

But part of it is the annoying psychic-not-psychic and his sidekick.

Life without them now seems wrong).

Carlton is firm, just as Henry Spencer is firm.

But someone can come along,

Can stare up at the tree that reaches for the sky,

And they can start to climb.

They can trim the excess leaves that kiss the ground,

Weighing him down.

He is not bulletproof –

Not the way Henry Spencer is, at least.

Life can and will shake him.

Storms can tear him down.

He can catch fire when he finds something

(Or someone)

To love.

But if he’s treated correctly –

Gentle hands, caring enough to learn about him,

Loving enough to take care of him after the storms of life hurt him –

He will grow to reach the sun.

 

Juliet O’Hara is a rose bush.

Beautiful, delicate, and stunning

At first glance.

But only a fool will reach for Juliet without warning.

Only a fool will take the delicate, soft woman

To mean weak.

Juliet O’Hara is not  _ weak. _

She is strong. She is fierce.

She’s not like Carlton or Henry, who are unshaped by the world.

She takes a beating from life.

First, she’s in love with a man who starts dating another woman.

Second, she dates a man who lied to her.

(This has happened twice, and she wonders what’s so wrong with her that she doesn’t deserve the truth).

But she will push herself back up.

She will wipe the blood from her face, and

She will fight back.

Yin mistook her softness for weakness.

If Yang hadn’t gotten there before her, Juliet could and would have

Killed him.

Allison was not as smart as even Yin,

Foolish though he may have been.

If you reach for Juliet without warning,

You will have to prepare to draw your hand away with blood.

Don’t you dare cross her.

Some people –

Like Carlton, Shawn, Gus,

Karen, and Henry –

Know how to find the rose.

Know how to treat a rose bush.

Sometimes, their hands will slip, and her thorns hurt.

Their hands have a drop of blood.

But normally, they know how to be around a rose bush and find the rose.

Beautiful and delicate, but not weak.

Never weak.

 

Burton Guster,

On the other hand,

Is not strong or fierce or bulletproof like the others.

He’s not free or wild like the ocean.

He doesn’t change often

Or easily,

But the storms of life –

Fire and wind and storm –

Can change him if need be.

Can chip away at the parts of him that need changing.

He’s soft

But reliable.

In the same way you walk out onto a field

After it rains.

He is the ground beneath your feet, supporting you.

In some ways, he’s even stronger than Carlton

Or Juliet

Or even Henry.

Bulletproof, strong, and fierce

Have nothing on

Reliable.

Gus is consistent in the way the others never can be.

You lie on your back, staring up at the sun,

Your eyes closed,

And you dig your fingers into the soft ground,

The grass tickling your fingertips.

Gus is the part of the world that you see all the time

But never really care to notice.

He is free in a way that the ocean cannot be,

But he is not wild,

Not unrestrained.

He’s free in his reliability,

Free in the way you run out and around for a few hours

Before blowing back into your house at dusk,

Cheeks red with sunburn.

Gus is the person to whom you tell your secrets,

Your dreams,

Your fears.

He knows it all, and he can handle it all.

He isn’t fierce, and he won’t hurt you.

His softness is not weakness, though.

He is strong.

In some ways, he is stronger than Carlton.

He is bulletproof,

In a way that Henry is not.

Bullets puncture his skin, but

He keeps on going.

The seasons change,

The grass dies,

But somehow, he is still the same.

 

Marlowe Viccellio is a field of wildflowers.

Small and dainty,

Beautiful to look at.

She’s not like Carlton or Juliet,

But she is still strong.

When the wind blows her and tries to tear her down,

She digs her roots deeper into the soil and stays put.

The wind must be stronger than that.

When storms come, she squints

Up at the sky,

Raindrops rolling down her face,

And she dares the sky to do better than this.

She springs up around the redwoods,

Around the other trees,

And the tree protects her.

The tree shields her from the storms,

From the wind.

Though fire will kill them both,

The fire never touches them.

Not when they’re together.

The leaves gently kiss the tip of the flower petals,

And Marlowe has fallen in love with

Carlton.

A man she never thought she could love

Before she met him.

She relies on him,

To an extent.

Not all the time,

But sometimes.

And he’s willing to be her shield,

Her refuge.

The daintiness amazes him,

And her resilience inspires him.

 

Madeleine Spencer is a river.

Gentle, soft, but don’t you dare mess with her.

She is calm, certainly,

But parts of her rage.

(She rages when someone threatens her son,

When she gets a call from her husband-not-husband

That her son was shot.

When her husband winds up in a hospital bed,

And a young woman he clearly cares nothing for

Keeps harassing him).

When she gets angry –

When she  _ rages _ –

You stand no chance.

Madeleine Spencer shapes the rock,

Even the most unyielding.

That’s part of what attracted her to Henry in the first place

(That, she thinks, and the fact that he was

Warm

And kind

And Protective.

Loving and sweet,

Gentle when necessary).

It takes her years to soften him.

She’ll put her hand on his face and gently turn him

To look at her.

She doesn’t need to use words, but she does.

She babbles on about her day,

Softly,

Because the only way to get him to open up,

The only way for him to soften and change,

Is to listen to her.

Is to listen to her gentle babble.

And she will shape the rock.

She is free, much like the ocean,

But she likes the limits that she has.

She likes that she can travel anywhere within reason.

But she likes, most of all,

That she can help her husband

(Not-husband, she reminds herself half-heartedly).

Her boundaries make her feel

Safe,

Secure.

Her boundaries comfort her.

They let her be with the unchanging rock:

The very one that changes for her.

 

Finally, Shawn Spencer.

Shawn Spencer is none of these.

He does not belong to the ground,

Like most of them do.

He is not like his father, nor like Carlton.

Strong, maybe. Bulletproof? Not quite.

He is not fierce like Juliet –

Her fierceness almost equals feistiness,

And he loves it –

But he can never be fierce or feisty like her.

He is not as reliable as Gus,

Not as small and dainty as Marlowe.

They all belong to the ground.

When their world ends,

When their lights turn off,

When they reach the “light at the end of the tunnel,”

Per se,

They will return to the ground.

That is where

They belong.

Henry will be buried under a rock,

Probably near a stream or a river.

Carlton will fall near a tree,

And he will lie beneath the redwoods.

Juliet will be visited with roses placed on a small headstone

In the middle of a cemetery meant

For fallen officers.

Gus…

Difficult as it may be for Shawn to think about Gus’s demise,

Gus will want to be buried in the middle of a field

(He doesn’t call cemeteries as such – occasionally graveyards if he’s creeped out,

But he calls them fields

When talking about where his final resting place

Will be).

And he will still be reliable, even in death.

Marlowe will lie next to her husband,

Beneath the redwoods,

Wildflowers springing up.

Even his own mother

Doesn’t fully belong to the water.

She doesn’t belong to his father;

She doesn’t belong, really, to anyone.

But she will choose to be with his father.

She will choose to lie next to him.

Her final resting place will be by the river rocks,

Her hand still holding his, even in death.

But Shawn Spencer cannot

And will not belong to the ground.

The ground cannot claim him.

The water will.

 

Shawn Spencer is the ocean.

He is wild, free, reckless.

The sea salt stings his eyes

But gives him life.

The salty air,

The ocean water

Is his breath.

Without it, he cannot live.

The water covers him,

Touching him gently as if

To kiss him.

The ocean pushes him under,

But not angrily.

The ocean is almost playful with him.

The ocean is infinite,

And Shawn is infinite.

Even Juliet, Gus,

Madeleine and Henry

Cannot fully understand Shawn,

No matter how good Gus and Henry are at it.

There are gaps in their memories,

Parts of Shawn that they will never know.

Other people do.

Millions of people know Shawn Spencer.

Bits and pieces of him,

A breath of freedom and wildness

That they could not otherwise have had.

His emotions rage, flare up,

And crash against the rocks.

The river soothes him,

Feeds him.

He reaches for the ground, the sand, the fields

When things get to be too much.

When tsunamis come,

When the ocean rises,

He beats against the redwoods,

But they don’t break

(Not unless they’re protecting the wildflowers).

He never touches the rose bush, though.

The rose bush never bears the brunt of his anger,

Wrath,

Or rage.

He is harsh and blunt,

And he will dig himself a spot under your skin.

He will remind you that adventure is out there,

That you need only to turn your face to the sun

And breathe.

He will show you a new kind of magnificence in the world,

One often overlooked

In favor of the steadier types of people.

 

Shawn Spencer doesn’t just  _ belong _ to the ocean.

Shawn Spencer  _ is _ the ocean.

**Author's Note:**

> Like it, love it, hate it? Leave a comment below or go to my tumblr, @ my-glasses-are-dirty, and tell me what you think!


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